I’ve set a monthly goal for November of taking tangible steps to make my company a “Socialprise” law firm. What does that mean?
Let me take inspiration from Dell Computers: “This is not about campaigns or initiatives,” said Richard Binhammer, senior manager, outreach communications and executive initiatives, social media and community, Dell. “It’s about adopting social media as a way to do better business.” Binhammer was quoted this week in Geoff Livingston’s blog spotlighting Dell’s social media efforts.
Livingston lauds Dell’s early efforts (in the bygone days of 2006 and 2007) as an early and enthusiastic adopter of social media as a customer service tool. The message (at least as far as Dell) seems to be that a non-cynical, enterprise-wide embracing of social media can pay rich dividends in both commercial success and corporate goodwill.
So, what will my “Socialprise” law firm look like? For starters, allowing fuller and better communication for existing clients has to be a priority. For example, and I’m making this up as I go along, why couldn’t twitter be used to facilitate non-proprietary, immediate exchanges on bursts of quick questions that don’t require a formal meeting or “sit-down”? And better yet, that might actually allow crowdsourcing of responsiveness?
I know that goes straight against the teeth of lawyers’ centuries’-old suspiciousness about sharing, but it depends what you share. My personal experience is that lawyers distinguish themselves less on brilliance and specific expertise than on great responsiveness and communication with their clients and their communities. I’m not terribly fearful of losing a client to someone who does something or knows something better than I do. Actually, when that does happen, and after the splash of reality that I’m not the bees knees, I’m kind of re-motivated to learn more and develop that expertise.
Twitter seems obvious, and frankly, kind of easy. Well, easy technically, difficult conceptually perhaps. But let’s start with that.
What’s next? Twitter again. Look at http://hashtagsocialmedia.com/ and what they’ve done with weekly scheduled twitter chats. In the run-up week preceding each scheduled chat, blogs are published on the “star” topic of the week, sort of priming the pump on the conversation. Why not have a scheduled full community of common-interest lawyers responsive on each week’s topic? This is terrific. In my firm, we used to host weekly “office hours” for the same sort of purpose.
Another thought: How about share client ideas? No, of course I don’t mean share confidences, or share proprietary information. But why not share learning? And better yet, why not let the clients themselves share the learning? Ok, that might be a challenge. But it’s actually been done, and long before the rise of social media. I’m almost thinking of the membership-model organizations created by the Advisory Board Company and Corporate Executive Board here in Washington. Could social media’s technology and culture make possible the real opening-up of a lawyer’s knowledge to his or her clients’ easy access?
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